REVIEWS.
The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Living. An old Irish Saga, now first edited, with Translation, Notes, and Glossary, by Kuno Meyer. With an Essay upon the Irish Vision of the Happy Other-world and the Celtic doctrine of Rebirth, by Alfred Nutt. Section I. London: D. Nutt, 1895.
Dr. Meyer's edition of this famous voyage of Bran to "Enme of many shapes, which the dear sea encircles," the Land of Women, is welcome, as is every fresh addition to the list of Irish tales saved from the risk of manuscript and made accessible to the reader. This particular tale was, as its editor concludes, "originally written down in the seventh century." From this original a copy was made in the tenth century, by one who left the poetry almost intact, but partially modified the prose, most especially the verbal forms. From this copy of the tenth century all existing MSS. of the tale are derived. Mr. Nutt would make the lost original to have belonged to the eighth rather than the seventh century; and as the foreign words belong to the verse, which certainly seems, though imperfect, part of the original tale, we should rather incline to the later date.
Besides the voyage of Bran, Dr. Meyer has given critical text and translations of a number of short tales and references touching Mongán, who reigned and died in the first quarter of the seventh century, according to the annalists, and is made to come from the Land of Behest to meet Colum-Cille by the author of an early poem, Mura of Fahan, who died about 650, as it has been calculated. Mongán was prophecied of by Manannan, the son of Lear, the god, who begat him by a trick (such as Uther and Zeus played) on the wife of Fiachna, king of Ulster and ally of Aidan, king of Scots, who fought the Saxons, or rather the English, "æt Egesan-stane," as the O.E. Chronicle testifies, s.a.
